Courtesy of the Sneak

Things have continued to be dreary and unlucky.

A thaw came, rinsing gallons and gallons of melted snow into the gutters, and then it froze. The sidewalks are a dangerous maze of ice, pockmarked by jagged human footprints and speckled with sharp flecks of the most unpleasant kind of snow.

The workman who fixed my furnace had promised to fix the upstairs toilet as well “after the storm,” but the snowstorm came and went and he never came back. For ten days we could only use the toilet in our downstairs bathroom, which is in the laundry room. The laundry room used to be a back porch. It’s completely un-insulated and doesn’t really get any heat. It’s freezing in there. I felt like I was using a Medieval privy, like the characters in Catherine Called Birdie which Rosie and I are reading right now.

The financial slump continues to be  a slump, though it’s begun to get better. We covered rent, which is a huge relief, but because the bad patch lasted so long we’ve still got a few bills and shutoff notices coming up in the next two weeks that are making Michael tear his hair out. And only after we fix that can I figure out how to put Rose back in her after-school lessons. I’m trying not to think about it.

Yesterday and today were pleasant though, thanks mostly to The Sneak.

We have a mysterious benefactor. I don’t know who they are, but I assume they live nearby and I hope they know I’m grateful. Every month or so, sporadically, always after I’ve mentioned going through a bad spell financially on the blog, the Sneak puts an envelope with two twenties and a ten in it in the mailbox. The envelope doesn’t have a name, it just says JMJ. The one that came at Christmas had a colorful card with the Three Kings on it, but it still wasn’t signed.

Michael once said “our sneak left money in the mailbox” and that’s how The Sneak got their nickname. Our horrible harassing neighbor we call Miss Manners, the family on the corner are The Baker Street Irregulars, and the mysterious tipper is The Sneak. I imagine them sidling up to our mailbox looking like The Cheat from Homestar Runner, but with an elaborate halo like the background of an icon. After we installed the security camera because of the harassment situation, I wondered if we’d catch The Sneak. But they’re too clever for us. Michael went to take out the trash yesterday and found The Sneak had put the envelope at the side door, where there’s no camera.

Fifty dollars cash wasn’t going to put Rose back in martial arts or pay the past due bills. But it was just enough to go to the shopping center and get a few groceries I’ve needed but have been putting off. I have to be in ketosis to control my PCOS, but that can get expensive. I like to bake myself ketogenic desserts with almond meal and beaten egg instead of flour sometimes, using monkfruit sweetener instead of sugar, but granulated monkfruit sweetener costs at least five times more than sugar. I’d been out of monkfruit sweetener for a week. When we found The Sneak’s gift, I had just come back from buying the cheaper groceries. I’d remembered that I needed monkfruit but decided not to get it because of the price. I took the wad of bills and drove right back to the shopping center, but on a whim I went into TJ Maxx first to window shop.

In the gourmet food section of TJ Maxx, they happened to have several bags of my favorite brand of monkfruit, for about the price of a pound of sugar. I got two.

I went to Kroger next, where I found there were beautiful steaks in the Manager’s Special clearance section, so I got one of those as well. And there was still some left to take Rosie to Sheetz for treats after Sunday Mass.

This morning I had a sirloin steak for breakfast and I’ll make a ketogenic cake on Valentine’s Day, courtesy of The Sneak and TJ Maxx, and whoever ordered too many really good steaks in the Kroger meat department.

As I was finishing my meal, the workman showed up. He actually fixed our toilet. He noticed the perpetual leak in the ancient bathroom faucet and fixed that as well. my bathroom is suddenly so modern I feel like I’m in a hotel.

Everything is grace. That’s the mystery of Christianity. All things work for the good of those who love the Lord, but it doesn’t always feel good. Often, through a mystery I can’t explain, we go through hard times even though God doesn’t want them. Sometimes we go through impossible times and we break. And God suffers and breaks with us even when we’ve lost the ability to be aware of Him. Better still, while suffering with us, He can somehow manage to turn the suffering He never desired into the fertile ground where something good can grow. That is a profound and beautiful mystery.

But I must say I like the other kind of grace best: the kind where things come together in a series of little miracles,  and you feel good.

Maybe I could think of God as a kind of Sneak: someone I can’t see or understand, who is doing things for my benefit, one way or another.

Image via pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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